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Sunday, August 17, 2014

Guardians of the Galaxy: Hmm...

So... if you have been on the social media for the past few weeks and have a decent amount of friends, I'm sure you would have witness the Groot disease, where your news feed gets plastered with numerous "I am Groot" references. Guardians of the Galaxy, Marvel's latest release, has been receiving tons of positive response. Me, being one of the slower ones out there, finally got the chance to watch the movie today, which is good, because I can no longer be afraid that a random 9gag/Facebook will spoil my experience of the movie.

I guess that's the problem with all famous movies. People will keep posting about them online until you have to watch it yourself or run the risk of bumping into an unintended spoiler.

Anyways, with everyone gushing about how good the movie is, of course I had expectations. Like way over the top expectations.

Generally I won't say that the movie was bad, but I kinda expected a tighter story. One with less questions or plot holes, mind you. While Guardians of the Galaxy offered lots of action packed and funny moments, somehow I felt that the something was missing. Like there were a lot of questions or questionable plot lines. Things that I couldn't bring wrap my head around (warning, spoiler alert! close this page now if you have not watch the movie and hate spoilers).

For starters, you have the Collector.

Is it me, or does the Collector felt incredibly useless/powerless in this movie? Back in Thor: The Dark World, he had this mysterious aura that lends to this feeling of power that he had. After all, he wields this ability to collect almost anything from the universe (that was my impression), and such an individual would wield a considerable amount of influence, wealth and power. Which was why the Asgardians chose to entrust him with one of the infinity stones after all, because for someone who aspires wield all six for the infinity stones, he must have some kind of ability to thwart the rest of the galaxy from acquiring it from him. Especially all the other evil bad guys.

However, in this movie, all the magic about him dissipated. He was shown hiding in a remote mining colony where outlaws lived, instead of an elusive ship that I had always envisioned him to be. Because seriously? You have the collection of the universe's most rare possessions, the infinity stones included, and you choose to hide in a mining colony. I mean if Thanos wanted to come after you, wouldn't that be a piece of cake? We all saw how easily Ronan overran the place, and how one measly explosion devastated his entire place, so how was he supposed to keep all the important things secure?

Well, you could argue that he has a certain degree of secrecy, but when you're stuck static to a fixed place, people are bound to find out where's your hideout, especially on a lawless mining colony. Or if people wanted, they would have. I don't know about you, but I pictured the Collector to at least command his own super power ship that traverse the galaxy, constantly hidden, or at least hiding in an abandoned asteroid or something. He's not supposed to be some junk collector on a scrawny little town. He was supposed to be THE Collector.

And since I mentioned Ronan the Accuser, the bad guy in this movie, lets talk about him now.

This guy was supposed to be a very evil bad dude who's terrorizing the Nova Corps people, killing thousands and wiping out entire outposts, but he has only one warship. Like ONE. How can one warship be so devastating?

Don't get me wrong, but I have played space civilization themed games a hundred of times before, and honestly, I don't know how one warship can unleash such an amount of terror upon a well established civilization, especially a civilization that is capable of launching a war with another empire. I mean they really have such hard time tracking or taking this one ship down? I mean Ronan don't even have a paltry fleet to back him up. And he was somewhat equally matched with the Ravagers, who are supposed to be an outlaw mercenary group. Seriously?

And even if we assume that he's able to carry out guerrilla attacks against Nova Corps colony worlds and evade the full might of the Nova Corps fleet, I kinda imagined that at least the attack on the home world Xandar to be much less easier.

The Xandarians, a technological advanced race, couldn't detect a hostile ship heading to their planet. I mean are you kidding me? Don't they have some sort of orbital stations to at least warn the home planet of threats heading towards them? I mean as a home planet, it should be the most heavily fortified and guarded planet right? I understand if a few outpost worlds gets slaughtered by Ronan, but for a homeworld to get invaded so easily with a lone capital ship, with only meager fighters defending it, one can only wonder how the Xandarians managed to hold out so long in their war against the Kree. For all its worth, the Kree could just send a few squadron or a few warships to Xandar and the war will be over in days. I mean come on, the Xandarians had to depend on a mercenary group, the Ravagers, to help them defend the attack. Where's all the firepower man?

It makes no sense at all.

And of course, with such easily breachable defense, the hero chose to store one of the infinity stones here out of all the places in the universe. What happens if Thanos decided to just come to the planet with just another warship? I foresee that would be an easy victory. Am I the only one who thinks that the orb might be safer with the Ravagers instead?

It's kinda sad when you talk about Yondu though. He chose to save dear Peter Quill time and time again, even offering to sacrifice his own crew just to defend dear Peter's heroic ambitions, but what did he get in the end? A stupid doll. I really don't sympathize with Peter Quill on this one though and I think Yondu has every right to kill Quill. And somehow his character development is funny, or fuzzy, don't you think.

And as usual like all Marvel films, no civilians death on screen during the invasion! I guess being a civilian in Marvel's universe is one of the lowest odds of dying job.

But still despite all the loopholes, I enjoyed the movie with its lame puns and jokes, especially the Mr Blue Muscle guy ,who takes all jokes literally. I suppose when watching Marvel movies you're not supposed to think, though I think they did an awesome job with Captain America. Oh well.